U.S. Budget Office Unveils List of 26 'High-Priority' IT Projects

The Obama administration's technology team will review expensive IT projects in order to identify potential savings.

U.S. CIO Vivek Kundra revealed a list Monday, Aug. 23, of "high-priority" IT projects that will be scrutinized, as the administration seeks to trim the federal government's $80 billion annual IT budget.

The 26 projects on the list include the U.S. Transportation Department's $3.7 billion air traffic control modernization and the Treasury Department's $2.7 billion investment in IT infrastructure telecommunications systems and support. In all, the projects on the list account for roughly $30 billion in total costs across their life cycle.

Kundra said during a media conference call Monday that the projects were identified and chosen by the White House. The projects' size and scope will be reviewed. Not all of the projects will be canceled, but some of them could be divided into smaller pieces in order to put them back on time and on budget, officials said.

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"We need to end a culture in Washington where we continue to throw good money after bad money," Kundra reportedly said.

In July, former Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Director Peter Orszag ordered a comprehensive review of the federal government's IT spending. The performance of the federal government's IT projects are being tracked on the IT Dashboard, a public-facing government website that the OMB debuted in 2009 to improve transparency and project performance.